Random Musings

Today was a great day. A fantastic day. I will write this on my blog to commemorate the occasion. Mark this day well. Mark it very well.

Let me know what you think of the new theme to my blog. Leave a comment.

Yes, I know, this is not something new. Lots of people have written about this, yes.

What with email, SMS, instant messages, the blogosphere, and what else, there seems to be a lack of people writing letters. When I was a kid, I used to write at least one letter a week. Kid here refers to the time between ages 8-16 or so. I used to write to my grandparents, I had a few pen-pals (remember that concept?), and so on. I had a file of stationery, with different sorts of envelopes, stamps, and paper. I had paper that was frivolous, paper that was more businesslike, even paper that I could never, ever use!

My granddad used to send me the stuff in bulk. Every few months, I’d receive a package full of more stationery. My letters were not epistles, just simple relations of what I was up to. Come to think of it, they were the precursors to this blog. Anyway, the act of sitting down at my desk on a hot afternoon, pulling out a blank sheet of paper, and writing the letter was a lot of fun.

The format was a simple one. I’d write the date in the top write, start with Dear xyz, and end with Lots of love, Adi. I’d sign too, at the bottom. I’d take care to spell correctly, and I’d look up words that I did not know in a dictionary.

Email just does not have the same feeling. I loved using a fountain pen, and watching the words flow, practically effortlessly. A bit of this has carried through to my use of email, SMS, and instant messaging as well. I simply cannot use “urs”, “l8r”, and the other common terms endemic to these media. I like to spell out my words, and use punctuation. Some people find that funny, and archaic. I suppose it is, after a fashion.

I was thinking about this today, and I realized that I don’t even have the mailing addresses of most of my friends. In fact, I don’t have the mailing address of ANY of them. That’s sad, isn’t it? Sure, I have their email addresses, but is [email protected] really a place where you hang your hat? I’ve been using email from 1997 on, and I’ve changed my email address four times. I went from Hotmail, to Yahoo, to Myrealbox, and finally, to Gmail. I’m hoping my Gmail address stays constant, but you never know, do you? I bought my own domain, so that at least adityanag.com stays with me.

With this journal/blog, I’m trying to build something that helps me keep in touch with myself, all through the years. I’ve tried the paper journals too, but something inevitably happens to them. They get lost, or I stop writing in them, or my handwriting is illegible, or what have you. Not to say that stuff like that can’t happen online. Regular readers will know that I lost a year’s worth of posts when I, in one of my smack-my-head moments, deleted the MySQL database that held them. Wiser after the fact, I’ve got a daily backup script running, that emails the database to an offsite email address.

The only problem is, due to the mostly public nature of this website, I cannot write what I really feel. Yes, sure, I can password protect the posts when needed, but that does not help to shake off the lingering feeling that if it’s out there, it can be read. I know it does not really matter, since no one cares. I’m just one of the millions and millions of blogs out there, and most of them are full of it. This one is too, I suppose.

So, yes, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing letters again. And then going and finding a post box, those red cylinders that once used to important, but now are largely ignored. Pasting a stamp on, dropping it in, and then waiting a week or so for a reply. The anticipation of a reply is half the fun. And then, when a letter arrives, for a few seconds you hold it in your hands, trying to tell by the heft of it whether it’s a five minute read, or a five hour one.

Sometimes, it’s just a one page reply, hastily penned in a few brief moments. Other times, a lot of thought has gone into it, hours, even days, perhaps. The evidence lies in the turns of phrase, the scratched out words, the well spaced paragraphs. A few are even all time classics.

That’s all for this time, I fear.

And I deleted my MySQL database that had my blog.. So it’s all gone. forever. Still, I will start a new blog! And it will be better than the old blog.. MUHAHAHAHAHA